Viewing Parts of Files (head & tail)

Command Equivalents

Description

Instead of having separate commands for viewing the beginning and end of files, PowerShell integrates this functionality directly into the Get-Content cmdlet using parameters. This approach is highly efficient, especially for large files, as PowerShell does not need to read the entire file into memory just to display a small part of it.

Viewing the Beginning of a File (head)

To view the first few lines of a file, use the -Head parameter, followed by the number of lines you wish to see.

# Displays the first 10 lines of the log file
Get-Content -Path "application.log" -Head 10

This is useful for quickly checking the headers of a CSV file or the initial comments in a script.

Viewing the End of a File (tail)

To view the last few lines of a file, use the -Tail parameter. This is most commonly used to see the most recent entries in a log file.

# Displays the last 20 lines of the log file
Get-Content -Path "application.log" -Tail 20

Live-Monitoring a File (tail -f)

The PowerShell equivalent of the indispensable tail -f command is the -Wait parameter. When used, Get-Content will first display the last lines of a file (the number of lines can be specified with -Tail) and then keep the file open. It will display new lines in real-time as they are added to the file.

This is essential for monitoring application logs or web server access logs live. To exit the monitoring mode, press Ctrl+C.

# Show the last 5 lines and then wait for new lines to be added
Get-Content -Path "C:\inetpub\logs\access.log" -Tail 5 -Wait